Tom Wilde

I think I can answer that question - but my answer comes from my own memory of newspaper reports from about 4 years ago and I can't guarantee its accuracy in every detail.

Apparently the system for reimbursing MEPs' travel allowances is a massive, institutionalised scam. MEPs supply details of the distance they travel to get to Brussels and are reimbursed at a standard rate per mile which would be hugely over-generous even for first-class air travel. The actual cost of transport used does not affect the rate paid, so if MEPs travel economy they make a massive profit. This is known and expected by the European Parliament, and I repeat, individual MEPs have no choice in the matter. They can either accept these massively-inflated travel allowances, or else not get reimbursed at all.

Knowing this, UKIP made it a campaign pledge in the 1999 Euro Elections that any UKIP members elected would publish accounts of their expenses and donate their surplus allowances to "victims of the EU". In fulfilment of this election pledge, about a year after they were elected Nigel Farage and Jeffrey Titford published a breakdown of their allowances and donated their surpluses (ie the amount paid to them less the amount they had actually spent) to the legal expenses fund of the Metric Martyrs campaign.

However, the officials of the European Parliament then hit the roof, claiming that the UKIP duo were defrauding the taxpayer by misusing their allowances. Apparently they were happy for MEPs to either pocket their surplus allowances or to quietly donate them to charity, but to publish accounts revealing the extent of the allowances scam was beyond the pale. Titford and Farage were summoned in front of the EP's disciplinary committee (the "College of Quaestors") and ordered to repay the allowances, some £11,500. There is a sympathetic mention of this case in the following article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/europarl/S...443000,00.html

I don't know what the outcome was, and whether they eventually had to repay the money. However, I can certainly imagine that UKIP MEPs these days are hazy about their expenses allowances, and if they donate their surpluses to good causes then no doubt they have to do it discreetly. In other words, the EP officials have forced them INTO phpbb_line on this issue.

Nonetheless, the case was presumably a contributory factor in attempts the following year to reform the EP's expenses system. Those attempts ultimately failed, but the fact remains that Farage and Titford kept their 1999 election pledge, exposed the institutional corruption of the European Parliament and nearly managed to embarrass it INTO phpbb_a major reform of the way it works. All in all, I think that it was one of UKIP's finest moments.